Picture Narrations

It's interesting to me that considering how much I love to write, it is one of the subjects that stresses me out the most when it comes to teaching my own children.  Maybe it's because I want to instill that same love in my children and I'm afraid that I'll fail and have only myself to blame.  Maybe it's because I love the art of writing but hate having to pick apart the mechanics.  For whatever reason, I'm not a fan.

One idea that the kids' advisory teacher gave me was to inspire creative writing through pictures.  The idea is to show them a picture and have them tell you a story about what is happening in the picture.  I did this with the kids together, and we brainstormed creative literary elements, adjectives, and word choices and came up with something really beautiful:

Giant antlered elk walk through the breathtaking forest.  The peaceful males silently and gracefully crunch through the leaves and snap branches under their hooves.  The beautiful leaves dance like ballerinas on the trees.  The crisp light paints the dancers orange, red, and yellow.  The wind rushes through the leaves and makes them rattle like rattlesnakes.  It hisses and whistles and chills my face.  Pumpkin pie and cinnamon spice scent the air. 

-Tori and Aaron 10/7/2013

Today, I did another one with Aaron by himself.  This time it was just him; no Tori to help.  I started by showing him this picture out of a library book (The Last Quest of Gilgamesh):

I asked him to tell me about what is happening in the story, and at first he was frustrated because we haven’t read this book yet.  I told him that it didn’t matter if he was telling me what actually happened in the story, but that I wanted him to make something up.  Here’s the first thing he spouted off:

“The lion and the person with the big white beard were trying to get past a cliff.  Two hairy half scorpion, half bug, and half hairy monsters almost killed them!  It was one hundred thousand feet down!  The lion walked forward and he almost fell down the big hill, but he didn’t because the person with the big white beard saved him.”

After some prompting and some help from a thesaurus, here’s his final draft:

Scuffy Saves the Underworld

Scuffy is an old man with a huge, white beard.  Scuffy is on a quest to the underworld to kill monsters.  Scuffy went to the zoo and bought a dangerous, African lion to help him kill monsters in the underworld.  It was twilight when they started their quest.  It was colder than an ice cube! 

They were close to the underworld when two half scorpion, half hairy monsters crept up on them.  John, the lion, tried to run away from one of the half scorpion, half hairy monsters.  He slipped off a cliff, but Scuffy saved his life by grabbing his enormous paw. Scuffy tried to pull John up, but he couldn’t get him up, so he had to throw him up and John fell on one of the monster’s back.  John was grabbing the monster’s face with one paw and scratching its tongue with his other paw.

Suddenly, Scuffy picked up a stone and threw it.  It hit the other scorpion’s eye.  It went through the eye and killed the vicious monster!  The other monster almost slapped Scuffy’s head off, but Scuffy dodged him.  John got so angry that he slapped the monster’s face.  Scuffy found the biggest rock he had ever seen.  He picked it up, jumped as high as he could, and landed on the monster’s back.  He took the rock and slapped the monster’s face five times.  Scuffy and John jumped off the monster and pushed him with all their might.  They pushed him off the cliff and he died. 

The End.

Not quite as tranquil as the elk, but I was proud of him!  Who knows, maybe I'll end up enjoying this crazy adventure after all...

Thankful Turkey 2013

Since we're putting Christmas decorations up, it occurred to me that it's probably time to take this guy down and let him sleep for eleven months or so:

This year, we decided to make a thankful turkey.  Tori and I made the body out of felt (Tori insisted he be cross-eyed), and we cut out feathers from colored paper.  The goal was to write something we were thankful for each night in November leading up to Thanksgiving.  The month was hectic (when is it not??) and we didn't write something EVERY night, but we filled out quite a few.  Instead of trying to save random paper turkey feathers in a shoe box somewhere, I figured it was easiest to just record them here.  So here are some of the things our family was thankful for this year:

Aaron: bed, food, videeoe games (love the spelling), car, house, Earth (which kind of looked like "fart" and kept making us giggle inappropriately), the scriptures, trees for air, and the church

Tori: pen, pencil, and paper (there's our artist for you), wilderness survival and Bear Grylls shows, animals (wolves and geckos especially), family, cousins (all 50...2 on mom's side and 48 on dad's...I think her counting may be off a bit, but I can't really blame her since I'M never exactly sure of the correct number!), a savior, and technology

Mom: Grandma and Grandpa, the scriptures, a warm home, getting my book published (WOOHOO!!!), the atonement, Daddy :), Aunt Melenie :), My sweet Tori Girl! :), and My Bugsy, My Sunshine, My Aaron! (all one feather...that kid has entirely too many nicknames!)

Dad: My beautiful girl Tori, Heather my gorgeous wife, a happy home, to have my whole family home (the kids and I were gone to Tri-Cities to visit Mim for a weekend), my love bug Aaron, health, and "a wife who perseveres through many obstacles to accomplish her life aspiration of becoming a published author" (again, WOOHOO!!)

Melenie was visiting for a few days and added a couple of feathers, also:  Hugs, kisses, and snuggles, and friends and family.

I'm just a bit sad that we didn't do more, because one of my favorite things about this activity is when we all run out of obvious things and have to really dig deep to come up with all of the many little things for which we sometimes forget to be grateful.  I feel so incredibly blessed this year, especially with my health improving and Todd finished with school (for now) and employed.  We have healthy children, the gospel, a home, a wonderful family, and I have my library card. 

What more could a girl need?

Happy Birthday Tori!

Ten years old!!!  Into the double digits...when did THAT happen?  I swear my little girl is growing up far too fast.  This year, Tori's birthday requests got a little more sophisticated.  For her school treat, she asked for these pretty treats courtesy of Pinterest: 

Strawberry shortcake kebabs drizzled with melted chocolate

For her birthday party this year Tori also showed her maturing tastes.  She wanted angel food cake with chocolate mouse filling and a powdered sugar glaze with a chocolate drizzle.  Apparently, it's the year for chocolate drizzling! Fine by me! :)

Cousins came to celebrate

No photo session with kids is complete without a "silly face" shot!

For her birthday dinner, we stuck to tradition and went to Red Robin.  Coincidentally, we happened to get a table right next to Jenna and her girls, who were out for a girls' night.  So fun!

Oh, how I love this little girl.  I'm so glad that Tori seemed to have a fun birthday and that we had the chance to celebrate her.  Though she's growing up so fast, she's still my sweet baby girl!  

Mother-Daughter Book Club

At Tori's parent-teacher conference this fall, Tori's teacher, Mr. Anyan, had pretty wonderful things to say about Tori.  Not surprising. :)  The only concern he had was that Tori doesn't seem to branch out as far as her choices of reading material.  She tends to stick to non-fiction science books and it's a struggle to get her to find novels she enjoys.  This had also been a concern for me, but I was running out of books featuring a furry creature as the main character (the only novels she'd been willing to read to that point).  

He suggested organizing a book club for Tori and her friends, which I thought was a fantastic idea!  It doesn't take much to convince me that a book club is a worthwhile endeavor...books PLUS socializing??  Yes please! :)  I love my own book club and was excited at the idea of starting one for Tori.  With the craziness of the holidays, we decided to wait until January to get going.  The other moms I contacted were enthusiastic and we ended up getting a pretty good sized group of girls.  

For the first month, Tori and I hosted.  I gave her a few options for book choice, and she chose "The Giver" by Lois Lowry.  I like to try to tie the refreshments to the book whenever possible, but with "The Giver" there weren't too many options, so I just let Tori choose what she wanted to do.  With the help of Pinterest (one of her new loves in life), Tori chose mini fruit pizzas and grape kebab caterpillars.  I was so focused on helping Tori host that I forgot to take pictures of the girls. :(  Most of the girls showed up - Jane Romney, Annie Fox, Lilly Brunt, Shaylie Freeman, and Elise Daines.  I let Tori lead the discussion and play hostess, so it was a good learning experience for her in many ways.  

Here are a few pictures I remembered to take while Tori was putting fruit pizzas together:

Sledding!

This year Todd has had a lot of fun with the kids and some of their nieces and nephews up on "Maynard Mountain."  He uses the snowmobiles to pull them up the mountain with their sleds and then they sled down.  The kids love it and get going pretty fast!  

Aaron's already trying to convince us that he can drive the snowmobile by himself.  He's pretty cute, but that's not happening anytime soon!

After a hard day of sledding, Aaron's rewarded with a cup of hot chocolate at Aunt Heidi's house.  How can anyone still be so adorable with such a horrid case of hat-hair??